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World’s Student Christian Federation. 
European Student Relief Series No. 13. 


THE WAY OUT. 


Any Spokesman of College opinion. 
Any Relief Speaker. 


DRAMATIS PERSONZ. 





SCENE.—Every College Meeting on Student Relief. 
Time.—Ail the time. 


The speaker has concluded his address and invites questions. 
After the usual painful silence, a voice is at last uplifted. 


Student. But what’s to be the end of it all? We can’t go 
on feeding them for ever. Why don’t these fellows get out and 


work? 


Speaker. Carefully collected statistics show that every stu- 
dent, practically every student in Poland and Austria, in Latvia 
and Esthonia, and at least 4o % of the students in Hungary and 
Germany are doing wage-earning work: that where they are not 
working, it is either because they cannot find work to do, or 
because they are physically unfit: that the work they do rarely 
brings in enough to support them while studying. 


St. Yes, they’re teaching, and that sort of thing, I suppose. 
But what I want to know is—do they work with their hands? 


Sp. They certainly do. There are considerable difficulties, 
unfortunately, with the Trades Unions. No student, for instance, 
can get employment as a printer, unless he joins the Printers’ 
Union, and the Unions oppose the admission of ‘‘ intellectuals.’’ 
Nevertheless, in spite of all obstacles, the Austrian, German and 
Polish statistics show students working not only as teachers and 
tutors, but also as demonstrators in laboratories or clinics, steno- 
graphers and typists, clerks, mechanics, wood-cutters, harvesters, 
casual labourers, farm labourers, night watchmen, coal-heavers, 
builders’ labourers, street car conductors, shoemakers, workers 
in film factory, film actors, lithographers, musicians in cinemato- 


graphs restaurants and cafés, shoeblacks, basket-weavers, 
navvies, under-gardeners, typesetters and waiters. They are 
found also in literary work, proof reading, in post offices, in 
mines, on railways, shovelling snow, in pick and shovel work, 
and in factories of all kinds. Women students have done waiting, 
sewing, knitting, dressmaking, embroidery, making preserves, 
picking and drying vegetables, millinery, fine ironing, reading 
aloud, convalescent nursing, telephone operating, taking children 
to walk, and supervising lessons and games, taking charge of 
hotel linen, canvassing, collecting bills for landladies— 


St. Please stop—you make me tired! They work right 
enough: that’s clear, but do you do anything to get them into 
work of permanent constructive value for their country ? 


Sp. You’d be interested in the Czech Student Barracks 
Scheme. Czechoslovakia has set a fine example. To meet the 
housing crisis, our representatives initiated the idea of. a Student 
Colony in Prague.. Four million crowns were given by the Govern- 
ment, the Red Cross promised beds and blankets, the city gave 
the ground, and 500 students worked every day building ten 
barracks to house 750 students, while women students helped 
in the kitchen and dining-room which was hastily put up to feed 
the student workmen. Only students who have taken part in the 
building will be allowed to live in the barracks. Two hundred 
Ukrainian and Russian students are building another barracks 
for their own use. AIl are receiving two meals a day. No work, 
No meals, is the motto. 


Another very sound scheme was the Austrian Wood-cutting 
Camp. Last summer, for five weeks, 45 men and 12 women stu- 
dents, with one of our Relief Workers as their Commandant, 
went into camp to cut wood for the Hospitals of Vienna, and to 
help to clear a bit of forest land for growing corn. They cut and 
stacked 150 tons of wood, had a healthy holiday and plenty to 
eat, and started the winter with a little reserve of strength and 
money. 


There are lots of other schemes on hand. Hungarian stu- 
dents have been working in a Textile Laboratory, making up yarn 
supplied by the Red Cross into cloth; Austrian women students 
have been employed to knit wool, similarly supplied, into sweaters 
and jumpers. Our Polish Student Relief Scheme includes a Stu- 


dent Workshop; Zirich is running a splendid: Foreign Student 
Co-operative and Russian Student Kitchen; we have assisted 
numerous Student Co-operative and Book Supply Clothing and 
Housing Schemes: every student receiving help from us in 
Turkey and Asia Minor is systematically provided with wage- 
earning work. Our latest effort is a plan for selling thing's made 
by students, carvings, paintings, etchings, embroidery, bead- 
work, and so forth, in countries where they may be disposed of 
profitably. 


St. A.1. Are you doing anything to get them back on the 
land ?. | 


Sp. As to that, we’ve all kinds of difficulties with the far- 
mers, who dislike employing students from the cities. But we’re 
going to keep on at it. The first thing we did in this line was :— 
The German Student Land Colony. 7 


The scheme is directed by the Studentendienst, a widespread 
co-operative organisation for the service of students, which was 
initiated by our movement in Germany in 1914. The Studenten- 
dienst runs several institutions in Berlin and the neighbourhood, 
for which the farm supplies vegetables, potatoes, flour, butter, 
milk, eggs, cheese, poultry, bacon, lard, etc. Amongst other 
institutions supplied are: A student house and restaurant where 
400 students dine daily : a small home where four students live and 
60 dine, and a hostel where 4o students live and eat. An auto- 
truck takes provisions from the farm to Berlin, and carries back 
to the farm all the kitchen scraps from the restaurants to feed 
the farm pigs. Last summer fifteen students spent some time 
there digging potatoes, getting good food and air and earning a 
little money. 


In Austria, we have supplied food to the Sonntagsberg Land 
Colony, a somewhat similar scheme, launched by the Austrian 
Student Christian Movement, and we are running a breakfast and 
an evening meal in a small college near Vienna, where women 
students are trained in scientific gardening and domestic stock- 
rearing, with a view to the development of intensive agriculture 
in Austria. We have sent numbers of students to work on. farms 
in their own country or elsewhere during vacations. 


St. Splendid: that’s the sort of thing we want to help. 


Sp. Glad to hear it! But don’t forget it costs: lots of money. 
to get such schemes going. Capital is’ necessary to launch — 
schemes, to provide material, and to pay for expert help in train- 
ing students. Building and farming plans involve outlay for 
meals and housing. And clothes must be arranged for too. You 
can’t expect men who have only one suit, and no possibility of 
buying another, to risk the ruin of it. You’ve got to start them 


off with working clothes or overalls. 


In several countries we are being urged to undertake Student 
Self-Help plans on a much larger scale, of far-reaching importance 
for the nations concerned. But we can’t touch them unless you | 
give us the means. But you’ll do it, for you see as well as we 
do that to get the educated young men and women of Central 
Europe into permanent constructive work is . 


THE. ONLY WWAYS OUd 


Money raised for all such work should be sent through the 
National Student Relief Organisations in different countries to our 
Treasurer, 

Mr. Louis HeEss, 
13, Avenue de Champel, 
Geneva, 
March, 1921. Switzerland. 


WORLD’S STUDENT CHRISTIAN FEDERATION 
EUROPEAN STUDENT RELIEF. 


JOHN R. MOTT, CONRAD HOFFMANN, RUTH ROUSE, 
Chairman, Executive Secretary. Publicity Secretary, 
347. Madison Avenue, 13, Avenue de Champel 28, Lancaster Road, 


New York City Geneva, Switzerland. Wimbledon, London, S.Ww.19 


